pear and blnewue cheese mmmmmm

Ingredients

• 4 slices of bacon, drippings reserved
• 10 oz. shell baby spinach or baby spinach-spring mix
• 2 ripe pears, cored and sliced
• 2 oz. crumbled blue cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp spicy brown or Dijon mustard
• 3 Tbsp red wine vinegar
• Pinch of salt and pepper

• Cook the bacon in a skillet, or in the oven. Reserve 3 Tbsp of the rendered fat. Let bacon cool slightly before crumbling.
• In a large mixing or serving bowl, toss together the spinach mix, pear slices, crumbled blue cheese, chopped walnuts and add the crumbled bacon to the salad once cooled slightly.
• Prepare the homemade bacon vinaigrette. In a small skillet or saucepan, add the bacon drippings and whisk in the sugar, spicy brown mustard and vinegar. Add a pinch of both salt and pepper. Once dressing has been well whisked, pour warm over the salad.
• Serve Pear & Blue Cheese Salad with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette.

Gourmet sure does Taste Good.......

......especially when someone else makes it :)

i have been doing all of our cooking around here for the past few weeks and i guess josh decided it was time to show us what he can do :) last night he made an incredible gourmet supper for us!

he started by marinading ribeyes (not sure what he used....secret) and then he grilled them over hot natura briquette charcoal. they were perfection already but then he suggested we get out the blue cheese we bought that afternoon at the amish cheese store.......which was not like "store bought" blue cheese--instead, it is silky and intense! a dab of that on top of the already awesome steak and i was in food heaven!!! he also made baked potatoes on the grill--he has this really cool potato stand that we have never used before--it has prongs that go up in the potatoes so the heat gets right up inside. we rubbed the potatoes with fustini tuscan olive oil and liberally doused them with kosher salt. the end result was AMAZING--so hot and fluffy on the inside yet super crunchy and tasty on the outside!  along the side we served fresh blueberries, strawberries and nectarine slices!  mmmmmmmmmmmmmm 

here's to an awesome dinner with my boys :)